Perhaps they’re the last five seniors ever to walk off the basketball floor with Mountaineers across their chests. And the five of them did the impossible — a story akin to ‘Hoosiers’ — they reached the Class C basketball semifinals virtually without substitutes. Their 18-9 season ended with a 47-44 loss to Fairview in the semis.

In small farming communities like Highwood, folks are used to playing the hand they’re dealt. Weather and grain prices are out of your control. All you can do is work hard, do your best.

So they did.

“I figured if we were going to do it, we could do it with us five,” Luke Davison said.

So those five played with as little rest as possible, sticking to coach Aaron Skogen’s yeoman brand of basketball. They played full throttle on defense and never static when they possessed the ball. Most importantly, they had to stay out of foul trouble.

“We had to come up with big plays, and we had to do it in a way that would keep our guys on the floor,” Skogen said.

And the boys were up to the challenge. Most of them didn’t leave the court during the game. Louis Aron, the sophomore sixth man, played admirably to spell the five seniors, and junior Trayce Hartman and eighth-grader Zeke Davison — Luke’s little brother — checked in once in a blue moon.

But mainly it was the Highwood Five doing what folks do in Highwood; they worked for what they got.

***

And during the fall, two of their seven returning basketball players — Grant Davison and Lane Prosser — had decided to transfer to Great Falls Central.It would have been easy for Highwood to give up on a basketball season. The boys had already won their second consecutive Six-Man football title, again paired with former rival Geraldine in a cooperative.

Everything seemed to be pointing to the inevitable reality Class C programs face these days: co-ops. The loss of players on an already-thin roster, the success of the co-op program on the gridiron and the volleyball court, it would have made sense.

But quitting isn’t an option in Highwood. You keep on keeping on.

“It’s just what you do,” explained Brandon Gondeiro, a Highwood graduate who now teaches and coaches Rivals football and Mountaineers girls’ hoops in his hometown. “It’s just a long grind, and you just have to keep working at it … no matter what happens.”

It was perhaps Highwood’s last chance to have a Highwood-only basketball team, and they weren’t about to give that up. (Highwood and Geraldine have already decided to co-op for all team sports this coming year.)

“We knew going into the year when those two transferred that the odds were against us,” Skogen said. “The boys really had an opportunity to really come up with all the excuses in the world. Nobody thought we would accomplish what we did just starting with what we did.”

But they did what the football players did when the co-op began and what the volleyball team did the fall before when they changed over to the Rivals as well. They adapted.

“We kind of got used to it,” Darren Malek said. “We always had to be reminded to keep ourselves out of foul trouble, but we got used to it. Everyone on our team just wanted to win, so that’s just how we played.”

It’s not like the Mountaineers didn’t have weaponry. Four of the five will play a sport in college, though Darren Malek, headed to Rocky Mountain College’s hoops program, is the only one pursuing basketball. Lafontaine and Ferda will join Darren at Rocky in the Bears’ football program. Jake Malek is headed to Montana-Western’s football team.

You can’t get through the tough-as-nails Northern C on athleticism alone. That division has claimed six of the last nine Class C boys’ titles and sent a team to the championship game in all but one of those years.

Things had to go almost perfectly. To understand it, one must understand the pieces of the puzzle.

***

Darren Malek shoots a contested layup against Fairview at the State C Basketball Tournament in Billings.(Photo: TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO/RION SANDERS)

Sure, he quarterbacked the Rivals to two Six-Man football championships, but basketball is his passion.

Darren’s Highwood journey was one full of responsibility. His father, Ty, starred for the Mountaineers in football and basketball in the early 1990s before going on to a college football career at Concordia College in Minnesota.

Skogen entrusted Darren with the starting point guard position as a freshman and helped lead the Mountaineers to a state runner-up finish. But as Darren made clear, he was just following footsteps, and not just his father’s.

When Darren was growing up, he said, every boy in Highwood was committed to success in athletics. In a small town like that, those older boys become legends.

“You go to school, you see these guys in the hallways, and they just seem like they’re a superhero or something,” Darren recalled. “We never thought we’d get up to be that big.”

He didn’t get there at age 14, that’s for sure. Highwood’s point guard stood just 5-foot-8 and weighed 120 pounds in the 2011-12 season, but he came up with big plays.

After the Mountaineers missed out on the state tournament in his sophomore and junior seasons, Darren wanted to step things up for his final hurrah.

“His competitiveness pushes him to a whole other level,” Skogen said, calling his point guard a “spitfire.”

Jake summarized his cousin’s mentality: “It might be OK to lose, but it’s not OK not to try hard.”

Darren, Skogen said, has that innate sense of leadership.

“I think it’s something you’re born with,” the coach said. “You either have it or you don’t have it.”

Darren worked tirelessly to hone his basketball skills — not just ball-handling or an almost-mechanical jump shot; he put his soul into understanding the game.

It manifested in that offense a winter ago that couldn’t spare to expend that extra energy; it had to make the most of every possession. Darren Malek was the key to that, dissecting opposing defenses with surgeon-like precision he hopes will one day lead to a career in the operating room.

“Him and I would see the floor almost identical,” Skogen said. “When I was getting ready to call out a set or something, he was two steps ahead of me.”

It takes a special kind of dedication to meld minds with a coach on that level.

Why?

Simple.

“It’s a responsibility,” Darren said. “You’re expected to live up to those high expectations.”

He made it clear: it’s not a draft-order, duty-bound kind of responsibility. It’s the kind you don’t feel right about not fulfilling.

“I love being from Highwood,” Darren said with his signature earnestness. “I mean, you have to work hard in school and everything. But when it comes down to it, I always say that I love being in this place. You practically live in a huge family in this community.”

Lafontaine personified the shut-up-and-play attitude so many small-town Montana kids master over the years. But hidden behind the blond shyness of his athletic 6-foot-2 frame, Lafontaine played the game with a boyish joy only found when a player finds refuge on the hardwood that can’t be found elsewhere.

On the court, Jordan could just play basketball with his friends. Off the court, he had to watch his father, Kris, fight for his life.

Kris Lafontaine fell ill in the summer of 2014 and was hospitalized in Great Falls for more than a month. He’s been in and out of the hospital since, fending off chronic pneumonia and complications associated with a muscular disease. He did, however, get to watch his son win a Six-Man football state championship with the Rivals and was able to travel to Billings for the state basketball tournament.

“He didn’t want me worrying about him, thinking about him,” Jordan said. “… He was really happy to see us make it to state, and it made him really proud.”

With Kris too sick to work, Jordan’s mother, Cindy, spent much of her time at her job managing the Clubhouse Bar and Grill in Fort Benton to help feed the family.

Highwood — though the family doesn’t even live there — has been incredibly supportive. The community put on a few fundraisers for the Lafontaines.

“We could have asked for anything and they would have given it to us,” Jordan said, admiration ringing in his voice.

What they could do, Jordan said, was support him in athletics.

“Basketball, for me, was one of those things where I could get away with the whole situation, what went on with my family,” he said.

If the hardships motivated Jordan on the court, it manifested in the right way.

“You could tell if he was having a rough time because he would be (at school) in the mornings working out,” Jake Malek recalled.

The extra work paid off.

A deadeye shooter, he became a scoring machine for the Mountaineers. It culminated in the District 8C tournament when he turned in a 30-point performance in a win over Tri-Cities.

The team knew, though, that it was bigger than points on a scoreboard.

“He knew we had people who were praying for him,” Skogen said. “He knew we had people who were there for him to talk to him anytime. Yeah, we wanted to win, but when it’s all said and done, we all just wanted to be there.”

And they were there. In Highwood at every home game, in Lewistown for districts, Great Falls for the Northern C tournament, the Mountaineer family came in droves. And they were there in Billings to watch Jordan and the Highwood Five take the floor.

But Jordan? He was there for his dad.

“It’s just great that we were able to do something like that and it made him happy,” Jordan said. “The guy, he has trouble moving and talking. … Making him happy, it’s probably the best part of it.”

Turns out his teammates were there for Kris, too.

“I think all of us wanted to see how his dad would react when we made it so far,” Luke Davison said. “Kris had always been there watching us and watching Jordan. … I wish we could have won it all just for him and his dad.”

***

Luke Davison handles the ball as Fairview's Monte Cayko defends during the semifinal round of the State C Basketball Tournament in Billings.(Photo: TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO/RION SANDERS)

That’s just the kind of kid Luke Davison is.

“Luke is one of the most humble and selfless individuals I’ve ever coached,” Skogen said, “almost to an extent where it hurts the team. He’s willing to just put himself in the background.”

It could hurt the team because Davison had a pretty sweet shooting stroke.

So why be so willing to share the spoils?

“Maybe it’s because I’m a Christian,” Luke posited, admittedly unsure where his humble nature originates. “I love the Lord. It’s just part of it. I love seeing other people succeed even if I fail.”

His teammates remember that unselfishness well.

“He was always worried about being a ball hog,” Darren Malek said. “We would always tell him to keep shooting.”

Skogen never complained about his off-guard shooting the basketball, not even when he couldn’t lift his arm.

Davison woke up at the hotel in Billings and couldn’t move his right arm. It was the second day of the state tournament, and the shoulder injuries that kept him out of football for three years (he only played as a senior) had resurfaced overnight.

It happened periodically, Davison explained, but this was a bad one.

“Usually it goes away within the day, but sometimes it sticks there and it hurts more,” Davison said.

That Friday in March was one of those times.

He gritted it out and still led the team with 16 points. But it’s two points that didn’t come that rings the Mountaineers’ memories. Trailing Fairview by four late in that semifinal game, Davison stole the ball and streaked down the court. He wanted to go left, but a defender was there. He tried a finger roll with the right arm he could barely lift. It rimmed short.

“It was just tough to see a kid working so hard and then the body fails him,” Skogen said.

Davison said the play doesn’t haunt him; any number of things could have changed the outcome.

Skogen commended Davison’s grit.

“The kid can hardly lift his arm and he still led us in scoring at the end of the game,” the coach said.

Davison is the only one of the Five not planning to play sports in college. He had the chance to play hoops at a few Frontier Conference schools, he said, but he wants to move on to other work. He’ll head to Missoula shortly aiming toward a career in physical therapy, and of course, hoping to help others.

While Luke Davison’s unselfishness made him worry if he was shooting too much, Jake Malek’s unselfishness allowed him the chance to shoot at all.

Jake, one of the most decorated Six-Man football players in recent memory, admits that basketball wasn’t his sport of choice.

And while the hardwood might not give the same thrill that the gridiron did, success still felt pretty good. So he played.

“It’s how I’ve been raised,” Jake said. “It’s a small community. I grew up watching every kid play football and basketball. It was ingrained in my mind that I had to do both.”

So Jake didn’t mind being asked to do the dirty work. He rebounded. He set screens. More often than not, he locked down the other team’s best scorer.

It got Highwood into the state semifinal.

In the first round of the state tournament, Jake held Manhattan Christian’s Conner Van Dyken to just three points. Van Dyken was the leading scorer in Class C, and the Eagles had been unbeaten.

“Jake was just in his grill the entire game and not fouling him,” Skogen said. “Just picture perfect defense. … When you’re losing your top scorer because Jake Malek won’t let him get a shot off, you see it filter down through the rest of their team.”

Jake attributes that unflappable bulldog mentality to his other love: rodeo.

“Rodeo is such a mental sport,” he said. “So many things can go wrong that you can’t even control.”

Unsurprisingly, Jake is entering the natural horsemanship program at UM-Western, a field that, like defending in basketball, requires both persistence and humility.

Logan Ferda was, like Jake Malek, an athlete who put on a basketball jersey.

“He’ll be the first to tell you basketball’s not his sport,” Skogen said of Ferda. “He played it because we needed him to play it.”

Basketball may not have been Ferda’s thing, but competing was. Ferda teetered on obsession with perfection, and it drew his coach’s admiration.

“He is so hard on himself just as an athlete,” Skogen said. “If he messes up, he’s almost inconsolable. It’s the same in the classroom. The kid just hates making mistakes.”

So he didn’t make too many. Ferda used his superior strength to bang around with much taller opponents on the boards, but he also had a touch on his jump shot that his muscular frame belied (so much so that Skogen called him “Mr. 15-Footer”).

Ferda had a coming-out party against Box Elder in January, a game that put the Mountaineers back on the statewide radar when they ran the defending state champs out of the gym. He found a groove and finished with 14 points.

“I wanted to yell at him because he was taking mid-range jumpers when we had layups,” Lafontaine remembered, “but he was stroking them so I couldn’t complain.”

He showed up big against the Bears again in divisionals with a key late layup. The next day he knocked down a 40-foot heave as the third-quarter buzzer sounded in the Northern C semis against DGS. It stopped a Bearcats run and paved the way to state for Highwood.

That was the goal for Ferda: spread the word.

“I liked to show how Highwood still had enough people to put out a team,” he said. “… It was really cool to wear the Mountaineers jersey.”

And what better way to do that than help send the whole town to Billings for state?

All of the boys agree on one thing: they wouldn’t have gone anywhere if not for Aaron Skogen.

“He’d always find a way just to motivate us,” Ferda said. “… He’d pinch just the right spots.”

It’s a lot easier when you know your team as well as Skogen did. He’d been coaching that group since they were in eighth grade, taken them to state as freshmen. And the boys — he and his wife, Marissa, call them their boys — bought into what Skogen was selling.

“That first year for them really started setting a precedent. I expected them to act and behave the same way I expected the varsity boys to behave.”

But it almost didn’t come to fruition. Skogen said he had opportunities move on from Highwood prior to last season. It would have been easy to go; he had just finished his master’s degree, making him eligible for administrative positions, and the two transfers left the Mountaineers without depth. Many people had written them off as a state title contender.

“Nobody would have blamed me or us after those two left if we’d jumped the ship for one of those other opportunities outside of Class C,” he said.

The Skogens decided to stick it out in Highwood.

“It really just came down to we couldn’t leave our boys,” he said.

The 29-year-old math teacher enjoyed standout careers at Ronan High and later at the University of Great Falls. It was there that he met Marissa, a Great Falls High grad, and the two were married. They settled in Highwood after college.

Skogen’s work ethic fit in well in Highwood. He said it comes from his parents. His mother, Tammy, was an NCAA referee and fostered his love for basketball. His father provided more of the compassion.

Skogen said he tried to blend both parents’ influences into his coaching style. This season, the first after the birth of his son, Davin, rounded things out even more.

“When I’m going home to a different family every night and spending time with the boys, my basketball family, I was better,” Skogen said.

He certainly made a lasting impression on Lafontaine, who described his coach as a father figure.

“A lot of his stuff wasn’t even centered around basketball,” Lafontaine said. “It was more about life. He rounded our edges for what’s in the future.”

By all accounts, Skogen is a great basketball coach.

He won’t have the whistle and clipboard this year, though. Skogen was hired as the superintendent in Geraldine in the spring, and though the two schools will co-op for basketball, Skogen is going to take a year away from the bench. It’s mostly to focus on the new job, he said, but there’s a twinge of nostalgia for the group he just graduated.

“I can’t picture myself coaching without that group,” he admitted. “… It just reminds me that I’ve lost my boys, that they’ve just grown up.”

And though 80 percent of them aren’t playing basketball anymore, Skogen still anticipates his boys needing his help.

“I’ll be expecting their phone calls because they can’t remember how to do their math,” he said with a laugh.

***

Highwood fans celebrate a basket during the Mountaineers’ semifinal game against Fairview at the State C Basketball Tournament in Billings.(Photo: TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO/RION SANDERS)

Every senior season is important to those involved. What sets the Highwood Five apart is what that season meant to the community.

Highwood, enrollment 26 students, was as loud as any other student section at the Northern C and State C tournaments. That little corner of Chouteau County must have been empty when their boys were in Billings.

Elmo’s Bar probably lost money that week.

Everyone wanted to see the Mountaineers take state against teams that were deeper, taller, knew they would have a chance to come back the next year.

“I wanted to give (a title) to them just because of the history of sports (in Highwood),” Darren Malek said. “There are so many people in the community that, that’s what they live and die for is just going to the ballgame and supporting the kids.”

It wasn’t the kind of support that weighed on their shoulders, though.

“We didn’t really have that much pressure,” said Lafontaine. “We knew they expected a lot out of us but regardless they were going to be proud.”

The community understood the bigger picture.

“It’s kind of the nature of Class C athletics,” said Gondiero, the girls’ coach. “You just try to maintain your team and your community as long as you can, but the inevitability of shrinking enrollments and the decline of rural America is bearing down on you.”

Rural America. That’s a place where there’s still some accountability, a place where people are nice to you because they might need your help one day when there are no other options. It’s a place that expects you to pay those kindnesses forward as well.

The community looked up to the Highwood Five, and they knew it. No pressure, though.

“It wasn’t that hard for us to be those role models, just because we have a great community and they expected it,” Ferda said. “…When you live with it your whole life, it’s not hard to be a nice guy.”

It may be the end of the line for the Mountaineer jerseys, but recent successes in football and volleyball — the girls made the state tournament last season as well — show that Highwood kids can still play.

And for those with generational ties to the community like Gondeiro, like the Five, hope abounds for a Mountaineer team again someday.

“It’s a changing landscape,” he said. “… Who knows what’s going to happen. We’ve seen the change in Eastern Montana with the oil boom happening.”

Gondeiro said the elementary school numbers are looking up as well. Highwood could be just Highwood again. But even if the co-op is a permanent fixture and the Highwood Five remain the last, Highwood’s faithful aren’t going anywhere.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Mountaineer jersey or a Rival jersey,” Gondeiro said. “The community is going to support them.”